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SEVENTY YEARS AGO. 



Reminiscences of Haverhill Corner 



by 



Arthur Livermore. 



NEWS PRINT, WOODSVILLE, N. H. 
IB02. 






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PREFATORY NOTE. 



Arthur Livermore was born at Holderness, N. H., Jau. 7, 1811; 
Graduated at Dartmouth Collej^e in 1829 ; studied law with Jeremiah 
Mason, and was admitted to the bar in 1833; located in Bath, N. H., 
in 1839, succeeding to the practice of Jonathan Smith; appointed 
U. S. Consul to Londonderry, Ireland, by President Lincoln in 1861, 
and retained this position till 1885; then settled in the practice of 
the legal profession at Bath, England, where he is still living at Th»' 
Hern, Oldfield Park. His father was Chief Justice Arthur Livermore 
of Holderness, and his mother Louisa Bliss of Haverhill. His grand- 
father was Samuel Livermore of Holderness, Chief Justice and U. S. 
Senator for many years. Harriet Livermore, the '* school-mistress " 
or" guest ■" of Whittier's "Snow-Bound," was his cousin, daughter 
of Judge Edward St. Loe Livermore. 

It was in 1820 or 1822 that young Arthur Livermore came up from 
the seclusion of his Holderness home to have his first taste of village 
and academy life at Haverhill Corner, then the social, official and 
political center of Northern New Hampshire. These reminiscences 
in the following pages written by Mr. Livermore for Mrs. Wil- 
liam Thompson, daughter of William Nelson, Esq., who is mentioned 
in them, were dated Bath, England, Oct. 27, 1888. They were never 
intended for publication, and in that fact lies much of their charm. 
They are the vivid impressions made upon the mind of a boy at the 
age of ten or eleven, recorded some seventy years later. They are 
accompanied by valuable notes furnished for the most part by Mr. 
Frederick P. Wells, historian of Newbury, Vt. [W. F. W. 



Keinini$cence$ of ^imhiW Corner. 



The very few who can derive pleasure from these reminis- 
cences are familiar with the scene of them, the common 
around which the people had ranged their seemly dwellings, 
a quadrangle sloping gently westward toward the Connecti- 
cut and the rich meadows through which it flows. 

Moosilaukc, Owl's Head, Sugar Loaf, and the associated 
heights over which the sun pours its light in the morning, 
and many other things might demand notice and description, 
if what I am about to relate was intended for the information 
or amusement of strangers. But the present generation who 
know it best, being familiar with existing modes and means 
of communication, cannot easily realize its sequestered state 
at the epoch the title of these records denotes. 

It was still called by the older people, " The Lower Coos." 
North Haverhill now embraces a district known at that time 
as "Horse Meadow." " The Catamount" was the name of 
a moderate eminence half a mile or more distant from the 
common, constituted by nature for a goal and limit to Sat- 
urday afternoon excursions through forest paths numerous, 
and each in its way diversified by fields and groves, and like 
attractions. 

Jesse Kimball was the preceptor of the Academy, and 
among his pupils were Benjamin West Binney, who gained 
distinction and wealth at the bar in New York, where he died 
about fifty years later ; Andrew S. Woods, of Bath, who 
afterwards became Chief Justice of New Hampshire ; Nathan 
Clifford, who gained a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court 
of the United States ; Everett Wheeler and Warren D. Goo- 
kin, who both became rich and died in New York ; Anthony 



b REMINISCENCES OF 

W. Morse, who was distinguished in the New York Stock 
Exchange by dashing specidation, and the attendant vicissi- 
tudes of fortune ; Josiah and Levi Bartlett, brothers, who 
made their lives useful in the practice of medicine ; Horace 
Soper, who became respectable in the law ; and a number 
of others, whose names I might mention, and whom I knew 
in the sequel of their lives as worthy perhaps of a distinction 
which they never reached, or perhaps aspired to. 

Nathaniel Wilson,* a lawyer, at or near Bangor, is, if 
living, the sole survivor of the group whom I could name. 

On the north end of the common, lived Moses Dow, Esq., 
many years register of probate. On the west side were 
ranged Osgood, Swan, the widow Dow, Towle (inn-keeper), 
Wright, (cashier of the bank). Coon. On the south was 
George Woodward, and on the east were John Nelson and 
David Sloan, Esquires ; Williams, the widow Bliss, Noah 
Davis, (father of Chief Justice Noah Davis of New York,) 
and Captain Adams ; their houses were all painted white, 
exce[)t two. A few Lombardy poj)lars remained standing 
like sentinels, in front of them, but soon fell victims to the 
prevailing dislike that arose about that time towards those 
unoffendin"' thino:s. It was a multifarious indictment that 
was found by the grand inquest of the people. One would 
aver that the tree nursed slugs ; another that it caused 
houses to rot ; another that its shade was unhealtful ; that its 
great height made it dangerous. In which of these, or for 
what other crime the old fashioned dandy tree was doomed to 
death, I know not, nor ever did. 

The Coon house was then an inn, as appeared by a board 
that swung: in front of it. But few travellers called to dis- 
turb the repose of Dr, Coon, whose age and corpulence made 
exemption from such disturbances desirable. The house was 

*Born iu Haverhill, Sept. 29, 180S, d Orouo, Me., January, 1892. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 7 

afterwards sawn asunder ; one part, hauled to the south-east 
corner of the common, became the residence of Mr. Blaisdell, 
the other, removed down the south road, took to itself some 
additions which qualified it to figure as the home of Gen. 
Pool, who could command a brigade, or shoe its horses, as 
occasion demanded. The ground was used for the site of 
the Grafton bank. Mr. Woodward's house came at an early 
day into the possession of Mr. Bell who enlarged and embel- 
lished it. 

Mr. Nelson's house presented a narrow front to the view, 
but afterward took wings, and hovered a rare brood, long 
since dispersed. 

Mr. Sloan,* his neighbor, first came to Haverhill as pre- 
ceptor of the academy, but afterwards entered the practice of 
law, in which he continued till his death. 

Mr. Williams made saddles and other gear for horses. 
His shop, which was a chamber in his house, was sometimes 
shared by Mr. Mayhew, whose reduced condition forced him 
to make paper fly-traps by day and teach the French lan- 
guage in the evening. Several boys whom I knew, actually 
made such progress under him that they assured me that, 
"Cammow-billy-bou-che-long," signified, "What do you call 
that?" That was the same Mayhew whose name was given 
to the turnpike from Plymouth to Bristol, and who kept the 
inn at the head of it. 

Two men had died in Haverhill a few years before the 
date of these records ; each somewhat distinguished in his 
way, and each has transmitted to the present generation the 
evidences of what we designate in animals as thorough 



*David Sloan, born, Pelhara, Mass., 1780. Dartmouth, 1806. Died, 
1860. Came to Haverhill 1811, married daughter of Col. Thomas 
Johnson of Nevvburj-, and had two sons who were graduates of Dart- 
mouth, but died young. Scott Sloane of Woodsville, N.H.,is the son 
of one of these. 



5 REMINISCENCES OF 

breeding. I mean that each has impressed upon liis descend- 
ants his own pecuhar marks of form and temperament. 
Their somewhat hirge estates in the northern part of the 
town marched, I think, upon one another. Colonel Porter* 
was of English parentage, and, if I have not been misinformed, 
of English birth, also. His manners and his mode of life 
were such as became a gentleman, and his discriminating 
hospitalities were generous and extensive. He invested very 
advantageously in land in Canada, as well as nearer home, 
but did not live long enough to realize the splendid estate 
which they would in a few more years have become. It 
might not be easy to find his equal among his numerous 
descendants, but they have been, to an extraordinary degree, 
bright, gay, graceful and winning. Col. Porter was tall 
and spare in his figure. He was largely conversant with 
men, and a great many of his pithy sayings were currently 
repeated seventy years ago. 

His neighbor, Gen. Dow,f was less adventurous, but held 
his small winnings with so firm a hand that he probably left 
an easier task to his executors than fell to the lot of Col. 
Porter's, and a proportionately larger estate. If anybody 
in derision could have spoken of him as a log, and taken the 
liberty of sitting down upon him, such person would soon 
have found the life and subtlity of the serpent within the 
cold exterior. If he or his lacked the grace that men admire, 
the adroitness with which they are guided, or the brilliancy or 

* Col. Asa Porter came to Haverhill about 1770, a ffraduale of Har- 
vard coUefje ; lived where S. F. Southard uow lives, on Horse Meadow. 
He was a Tory ; married a Miss Crocker, and tlieir daughter married 
Mills Olcutt of Hanover, whose three daughters married VV. H. Dun- 
can, Joseph Bell, and IJufus Choate. (See Ilistorij of Ildvcrhill, p. 82). 

t Moses Dow, born, Atkinson, N. H. Harvard, 17G9. Came to 
Haverhill 1770. Owned the present Keyes farm. Major-General of 
the State militia. Married Phebe Emerson. He died March 11, 1813, 
aged 61. She died July 11, 1842, 91 years, 4 months. History of 
Haverhill, p. 252 et seq. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. » 

beauty by which they are attracted, they have certainly shown 
ability in winning the cfootl things of this world, and are not 
unlikely in the end to give a fair account of themselves. As 
early as Gen. Dow's time it had come to be suspected that 
the good things that men ate were not equally healthful. But 
he knew no such differences, and declared unaffectedly, 
" The more I eat the better it is for me." 

A son of this gentleman was Moses Dow, for many years 
register of probate, and already round. He was a man of 
remarkable quietude of manner, and, on sitting down, un- 
consciously assumed all the appearance of being fast asleep. 
He testified in a certain case, which will be adverted to in the 
sequel, and which interested the neighborhood a good deal, 
concierning somewhat noticed by him at about eight o'clock 
in the evening. Counsel arguing the cause to the jury com- 
menting upon Dow's testimony, exclaimed, "Eight o'clock 
in the evening? Impossible, gentlemen ! My word for it, he 
was at that hour asleep ! Do you doubt it? then look at him, 
for there he sits, the very image of profound repose?" I 
never heard a syllable in disparagement of his character or 
conduct in office. He was appointed while its term was dur- 
ing good behavior, but the legislature saw fit to change the 
law, and Dow and Atherton, who had been long in office 
were displaced, and never afterwards appointed. 

The widow of General Dow, and two daughters lived at 
this time in their house on the west side of the common, and 
next to Towle's inn.* These ladies had been genteelly edu- 
cated, and possessed the only piano forte, but one in Haver- 
hill. Neither of them was ever married, and the willing- 
ness of one of them to become the wife of a gentleman, then 
of great promise, and afterwards of great eminence in his 

* Where Milo Baile.v lived. It was somewhat altered after its 
damage by the fire in 1848. 



10 REMINISCENCES OF 

profession, was one of the causes of an event that attracted a 
vast deal of notice at the time, and the tradition of which 
still survives. All the actors, and, I may safely say, all the 
spectators of its scenes, have long ceased to care for it, and I 
think I may, without risk of grieving any person, set down 
what I remember of it. At that time, and for many years 
afterwards in New Hampshire, it was not unusual for a single 
gentleman to be received as a boarder in the house of one of 
the better class of people. One party to the arrangement 
gained in this way a home, and the other a pleasant addition 
to their's. It thus became convenient, and perfectly in har- 
mony with the usages of the country, for Mr. Bell,* a gen- 
tlemanly young lawyer to occupy one of the spare rooms in 
the home of Mrs. Dow, and to be upon the terms of mutual 
kindness, and of domesticity ordinarily attaching to such re- 
lations. Unfortunately they resulted in the formation of ex- 
pectations on the part of Miss Mary Dow, which were shared 
by her mother and sister, and in consequent disappointment. 
It is not necessary to believe that Mr. Bell willingly caused 
or knew of the existence of these expectations. The honor- 
able sequel of his life, indeed, rather demands that we should 
believe the contrary. During his absence these ladies heard 
of his engagement to a granddaughter of their old neighbor. 
Col. Porter, charged him with it on his return, and ex[)elled 
him from the house, hurling his boxes into the road, and giv- 
ing publicity to grief in every possible manner. I use the 
terms of plurality, because I did not learn that the lady to 
whom the alleged wrong had been done, was particularly 
active in these demonstrations, or the contrary. She very 

*Jo8ei)h Bell, born Bradfoifl, Miiss.,17S7. Dartmouth, 1807. Haver- 
hill lSll-1842. Hcinovcd to Boxtoii and became a partuer with lleury 
F. Durant who founded Wellesley ('ollejite. President of Massa- 
chusetts Senate. L.f>. D., from Dartmouth Colleoje, 18;]7. Died at 
Saratoga, 1851. — History of Ilavcrhill. Bench and Bar of (irafton Co. 



HATERHILL CORNER. 11 

soon retired to the place of her father's former residence,* 
near Coos Meadows, and there remained durinor her life in 
absolute seclusion. By reason of the shortening of the road, 
the house had been thrown into obscurity behind a dense 
growth of trees, and underwood, and to the traveller who 
with difficulty gained a view of it seemed the fit abode of 
gloom and despondency. There were persons of refinement 
and position who were sincerely attached to the unfortunate 
gentlewoman, and sympathized in her grief. 

It would not be strange, therefore, if they shared in her 
resentment also, and under its influence gave expression to 
opinion not fully warranted by evidence. Her sister, a more 
strenuous character, gave expression to her sense of the situ- 
ation in a different manner, and, as it was said, she induced her 
sister to consent to a suit at law. That unfortunate measure 
was attended in the first place with a trial at Haverhill, in 
which the jury failed to agree, and finally in one at Ply- 
mouth, in which a verdict was rendered fur the defendant. 
The plaintiff's principal counsel was Mr. (afterwards judge,) 
Fletcher of Boston. The attorney-general, Mr. Sullivan, 
argued the case for the defendant with ability that attracted 
great commendation. 

Previous to this last trial, a proposal was submitted to Mr. 
Bell, who replied that his honor was at stake, and that he 
could not retire until the end. A large bill of costs was in- 
curred, which the defendant never enforced during the life of 
the plaintiff, but did revive the judgment against the exe- 
cutor, her sister, to whose advice and agency he imputed the 
law suit, and who, by some inheritance had become able to 
satisfy the judgment without much personal inconvenience, 
or any abridgment of the comforts to which she was accus- 
tomed. 

* The house on the Keyes farm ; burned in 1899. 



12 REMINISCENCES OF 

The boxes and other things which the exasperated ladies 
had caused to be thrown out of doors, Mr. Bell caused to 
be taken to the Grafton hotel, kept by Major St. Clair, 
where he took lodgings, and to which place he brought his 
wife after marriage. There they abode while the house which 
had been George Woodward's was undergoing the required 
alterations and repairs. They soon took possession of it, 
and there lived until they left Haverhill and went to Boston 
to reside, about twenty years afterwards. These twenty 
years he devoted to a most successful practice of his profes- 
sion, in which he became very eminent, and to the accumu- 
lation of a fortune apparently in excess of what that practice 
accounts for. He was believed to have been the purchaser 
of a considerable part of Col. Porter's lands on terms that 
left him a large profit. He was temperate and industrious 
by habit, and either denied himself, or did not value, a large 
intercourse with his neighbors. His manners were gentle- 
manly, and his house a hospitable one.* 

In politics his opinions were strong, and his feelings 
always sufficiently animated. But he appeared to desire no 
office, although his friends once endeavored to send him to 
Congress. In person he was of medium stature, plethoric, 
of dark complexion, with eyes and brows expressing force 
and thought, rather than the mirth and suavity known to 
those who were in his inner circle. He died at the age of 
sixty, in the fulness of his fame. 

Dr. Ezra Bartlett f lived and died in the house next to the 
Grafton hotel,:}: on the east of it. He was son to Josiah 
Bartlett, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and, 

*M:iry Dow difd Feb. S, 1840, aged 55. Hannah Dow died Dec. 6, 
1853, aged 64. (Cemetery.) 

t Dr. Bartlett was born Kingston 1770, died Dec. 5, 1848. 

+ Tlie Grafton hotel was the three story house on Court street, 
where the late Dr. Phineas Spaulding lived. The house in which Dr. 
Bartlett lived is now the second beyond the Dr. Spaulding house. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 13 

in hie old age at least, took pleasure in adverting to the fact. 
Seventy years ago he was in full practice of his profession, 
sharing with Dr. Carleton the cure of all maladies through- 
out a large district, and so far as I ever learned, performed 
his professional duties with fair success. Two of his sons, 
at least, joined the medical profession, but not in Haverhill, 
and his daughters were favorites in society. The doctor had 
a leaning towards political life, and was more than once 
elected Councillor. He dressed carefully. The frills of his 
shirt were always in evidence, exquisitely plaited. His man- 
ner and habits were perfectly dignified. 

A different character, though a well dressed person, living 
apparently at ease and without any kind of employment, 
made daily appearance in public in those days. His walks 
were strictly limited within half a mile of the jail, inside 
which limit, whether for health or enjoyment he was much 
abroad. In brief, he was one of a class rather numerous in 
those days, termed "jail birds," unfortunate gentlemen who 
had been imprisoned for debt, but by giving bonds to keep 
within the prescribed distances from the prison, were set at 
large. After a while the gentleman referred to, settled with 
his creditors, married a very nice young lady employed as 
amanuensis in the registry of deeds, and disappeared from 
Haverhill. A granddaughter is at this moment known as a 
public singer of some eminence. 

There were at that time a number of jail birds at that 
place, most of them apparently laboring men, whose estab- 
lished character for honesty enabled them to furnish the 
required securities, and thus to obtain employment enabling 
them to live. Imprisonment for debt was defended by some 
sensible men who thought it acted as a restraint upon im- 
prudence, as well as an aid to the poor man requiring credit. 
He could obtain it by means of this sort of lien, which the 



14 EEMINISCENCES OF 

creditor held upon the body of the debtor. But one very 
serious uiischief of the usage was tliat many enterprising and 
useful men, foreseeing their inability to meet their payments, 
absconded to avoid the disaster of their failure. 

Imprisonment for debt was gradually alleviated, and in 
1840 absolutely abolished, excepting always pre-existing con- 
tracts, which the constitution of the United States did not 
permit a state to impair, as it would do by weakening in any 
form, the creditors' means of enforcing them. Consequently 
for a number of years after the repeal, the process ran against 
the body of a debtor whose contract ante-dated it, and I re- 
member the case of one unlucky man as late as 1848, whose 
case was not comprised in the several ameliorating statutes 
designed for the relief of debtors, and who was held in close 
confinement till he paid. 

Prisons are stages at which a considerable class of advent- 
urers are arrested, and not a few end, and that check and 
eddy of passion results many times in scenes and traditions 
very interesting. 

I have not much to say of the Haverhill jail. Along with 
a troupe of boys I followed to its portals an unhappy man 
bound over by the justices of the peace for trial upon charge 
of horse-stealing. I witnessed the examination, and pitied 
the prisoner, who was a young looking and well dressed man, 
and who, as I thought, was weeping during and after the 
procedings. But before many weeks that penitent object of 
my pity, had, with serrated edge of the main spring of a 
watch, severed the iron bars of the casement, and escaped. 
He was never recaptured, having, as was supposed, fled to 
Canada. 

The story of Burnham, his two-fold murder committed 
within the walls of the same jail, and his execution upon the 
summit of Magazine hill, lives no doubt in tradition. But a 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 15 

brief appendix may possibly be new to the present generation, 
and may be relied upon as strictly true, however droll. The 
two men who were murdered had been committed for debt, 
and the precept in form commanded the sheriff to keep them 
in custody until released by due process of law. Now the 
lawyer by whose agency the two men had been committed 
did not so far abandon himself to the sensations of horror 
generally awakened by the tragedy as to forget the interests 
of his clients, and he cautioned the sheriff, who was jail 
keeper as well, not to permit nor to suffer the dead bodies of 
the prisoners to be removed, as he might by so doing become 
liable to the conditions as for an escape, and advised him 
carefully to examine the mittimus. The sheriff, old Col. 
David Webster, a brave and honorable man, but conscious 
of not being quite a match for the astute lawyer, was a little 
amazed and puzzled by the condition. "What shall I do? 
I cannot keep them till they decay. They will become in- 
tolerable, etc., etc." "You can salt them," said the at- 
torney. "I'll be d d if I do any such thing, but I'll 

soon find out what my duty is." He was soon in his saddle, 
and next mornino; about breakfast time dismounted at Judge 
Livermore's in Holderness, who readily restored quiet to the 
mind of the sheriff. The jail-keeper seventy years ago was 
a Capt. Hoit who became embarrassed in his affairs and gave 
place to Dea. George Punchard. 

Note. — What has been said about seiziug the bodies of de- 
ceased persons for debt, was not very uncommonly done in the last 
century. On the 28th of June 1785, Judge Thomas Chandler of 
Chester died in Westminister, Vt., jail, before he could take the bene- 
fit of an act passed by the General Assembly four days before, releas- 
ing him from imprisonment. The same penalties used in the case of 
the victims of Burnham were threatened. Accordingly his body lay 
in one of the cells of the jail until it became so oflensive as to endanger 
the health of the inmates. At length Nathan Fisk, the jailer, sug- 
gested an expedient which was put into practice. The jail yard bor- 
dered upon the burying ground, and a grave was dug within the jail 
limits, but sloping obliquely under the fence in such a manner 



16 REMINISCENCES OF 

[Stephen] Peabody Webster,* Esquire, was clerk of the 
Superior Court, and kept its records in a room in his house, 
which he made cheerful in winter with a good fire, and with 
the fragrance of paper. He had a farm "out back," which 
he enlarged by draining a small lake, and he had lands, not 
his farm, in the same vague region and elsewhere. I name 
these facts concerninjj the land, as the genteel form of indi- 
catinjx that he was rather straightened than flush in the arti- 
cle of money, for land in those days was a terrible burden to 
its possessor. Esquire Webster led the singing on Sundays 
at meeting, and gave it emphasis by nods and gestures, stand- 
ing erect in the gallery, and beating time upon the book. 
He did somewhat in the politics of the state, in whose Senate 
he used to sit. But the light of that house was Mrs. Web- 
ster. The pair had been denied children, in order, it would 
seem, that the love with which her heart abounded, might be 
shed far and wide, penetrating places otherwise loveless and 
forlorn, and ascend to the exalted source and worthiest ob- 
ject of it. Her great goodness towards everyone with whom 
she came in contact was a charm that they all felt. She was 
leader moreover, among women in all manifold endeavor for 
the unseen suffering, benighted, or oppressed. She had a 

thiit the bottom of the tjrave w:is withiu the hitler, uud the man was 
aecordinfijly buried in it without being removed from the jail limits. 
This < 'handler was one of the grantees of Chester, and a noted man in 
his time. He was a Tory. — IlalVs Eastern T7., p- 583, 033-637. 

Burnham sold his body to Dr. Bartlett for ten dollars. Josiah 
Burnham murdered Russell Freeman and Capt. Joseph Starkweather 
in Haverhill jail on the evening of Dee. 17, 1805. He was tried at 
Plymouth, his defense being Daniel Webster's first case. He was 
hanged on Powder house hill Aug. 12, 1806, before an assemblage of 
10,000 people. A sermon was preached by Rev. David Sutherland of 
Bath. He sold his body for rum, and it was taken to the Ox Bow in 
Newbury, and dissected by the doctors. The manacles with which 
he was confined, and the rope with which he was hanged, are still in 
the jail. For the conditions of Haverhill jail at different times, see 
Parker Pillsbury's " Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles,"' p.p. 125, 
292-295. The jail was built in 179.3, and rebuilt about 1845. 

*S. P. Webster, graduate of Harvard college. Clerk from 1805-35. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 17 

small apartment in her house for the custody of the "Tracts,' ' 
as agent for the society that published them, and was never 
happier than to aid the young people who called for them in 
the selection of such as fitted their several conditions of mind, 
or worldly fortune She knew all, and did much about 
missionary, educational and Bible societies. Her house was 
the meeting place of their travellers, and of the ministers who 
came to the village. 

If Mrs. Webster was more compliant towards the tastes of 
us boys, and even understood us a little better, she loved us 
more, and strove more earnestly for our good ; that lay, she 
thought, in a direction opposite to that of the pleasant ways 
denoted by the boys' instincts, and lightened by her hus- 
band's indulgent countenance. On Sunday mornings in 
summer we were sent to our chambers, each with a tract, to 
await the hour of preparation for a more serious duty, and 
her familiar hail at the foot of the stairs, "Now boys, you 
may lay aside your tracts, and go into the garden and gather 
your carraway, and then it will be time to set out for meet- 
ing." That sort of nosegay was deemed to be the thing for 
the holy hour, and, to say the truth, it has to this day the 
odor of sanctity to my nostrils.* 

We were called to meeting by the sweetest toned bell ever 
heard, which old Mr. Cross made to swing in the steeple of 
the meeting house f on Ladd street, with a strongly religious 



*Peabody Webster lived in a large two-story house on Court street, 
the last two-story house on the left as you go east, and where Mr. 
Merrill now lives. That is the house where Rev. Ethan Smith lived 
about 1790-1800. He (Mr. Smith) was a learned and noted man, and 
wrote a book to prove that the Indians are descendants of the ten lost 
tribes. 

i The old meeting house stood on the east side of Ladd street, (first 
occupied in 1790), a few rods north of the street that goes up to the 
depot. The school house on the corner was built from its materials. 
The old bell, (cracked) is in its tower. 



18 REMINISCP^NCES OF 

air which no other bell ever had ; nor could any but the 
same old man draw forth from that one. 

Grant Powers* expounded the doctrines to a congregation 
that knew not the infelicity of doubt, and with the air of one 
who did not doubt either his own dogma, or his hearers' ac- 
ceptance of it. The system of ffiith conserved in that church 
did certainly prevail. Those who resisted were marked. 
Those who regarded the matter objectively not the less be- 
lieved, and looked for the day when that belief should be in- 
formed with life, and should bear fruit in their own hearts. 
Among these I may name, without disrespect, the remnant of 
the Dow family, whose apathy was such that they did not all 
even go habitually to meeting. They were not the less happy 
in believing that a boy named Bailey Martin, a very poor 
and ignorant boy, had obtained religion, and they were so 
much impressed by the change the event had wrought upon 
the lad, that they invited one or two of their friends to wit- 
ness his demonstrations. The poor, ignorant boy was called 
in, and at their request assumed a devotional attitude, in 
which the spectators joined, and confessed to God that he 
was a sinner, and had been a sinner from the time that he 
was knee-high to a toad! 

Following the afternoon meeting was the Sunday school, 
held in a school house at the Corner. For this the boys and 
girls prepared by committing to memory such hymns and 
Scripture as they pleased, for which they received payment 
at the rate of one cent for each hundred verses so committed. 
The tally was kept by the issue of tickets of the denomina- 
tion of one cent and one mill, all of which were redeemed in 
cash at the end of the quarter. If the mammon of the world 

* Rev. Grant Powers, born in Ilollis, N. II., 17S4, nfphew of Rev. 
Peter Powers, son of Lunipsou and Elizabeth (Nutting) Powers. Dart- 
mouth, ISIO. At Haverhill 181.5-29 Died in Goshen, Ct., 1841. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 19 

appeared to some to have been unwarrantably thus drawn 
into the service of religion, it may be remembered that much 
Scripture was through this inducement impressed upon memo- 
ries at a period when such memories are most impressible 
and retentive. Conference came in the evening "at early 
candle-lighting," at which the minister was not ordinarily 
present, but left to the deacons and other gifted members of 
the church, the conduct of tiiat somewhat diversified scene of 
exhortation, psalmody, mutual encouragement and prayer. 

"Early candle-lighting,'' the formula used by the minister 
to denote the time for the conference to assemble, denoted 
also the absence of clocks in some of the houses that could 
be depended upon as unerring time-keepers. I like to dwell 
upon any of the tokens of manners more primitive than 
our own, when the flight of the hours was marked by the 
movement of the heavenly bodies, when the cock announced 
tlie beginning of the day's labor, and the twilight its close. 
This gloaming on Sunday never failed of light suflficient to 
guide the pious steps of dear Mrs. Webster to the conference. 
She bore in a brass candlestick a tallow candle, to help in 
the imperfect illumination of the scene. If she ever wearied 
of the clumsy exhortations of the actors, their prayers that 
painfully dragged, for the devout orator to frame a wish or to 
imagine a want not already more than supplied by the 
bountiful source of all good ; if she failed to be wakened to 
ecstacy by the singers grouped around the candles, and hold- 
ing their books in a manner to receive their very dim light, 
she took up arms against the perception of such weariness, 
because the conference was a means of grace, and it was her 
duty, and must be her pleasure to attend it with regularity. 
And she did so. Twenty years at least, later, that candle 
was represented by its like, conveyed in the same brass 
candlestick, by the same figure, scarcely changed, though 
moving with steadiness naturally impaired by age. 



20 EEMINISCENCES OF 

Seventy years ago the kitchen clock in Mrs. Webster's 
house was wound on Saturday evenings, because the wind- 
ing was not counted a work of necessity or mercy permitted 
to be done on Sunday. Of her views as to some worldly 
amusements, I shall have occasion to say somewhat in the 
sequel. On the subjects of portraits she adopted the popular 
estimate, with the qualification that a good portrait might 
become a snare, and cited the case of a minister who found 
that of a most beloved daughter, deceased, worked a mischief 
upon his heart, and a hindrance in the path of his duty. He 
caused the offending picture to be taken down from the wall, 
and hidden in the garret, declaring the cause to be that he 
found himself " carrying it to meeting with him." 

Captain Benjamin Merrill was, seventy years ago, the 
foremost man of business at Haverhill Corner, and in the 
matter of honesty, no one had, or could have had a higher 
character. He kept store in a building next to Grafton 
hotel on the west : the two brothers, John and Samuel Page, 
conducting a like business in the one next in the same 
direction. Mr. Nelson later built his office immediately 
west of Page's store, and then came Jacob Williams' garden. 

Captain Merrill appeared to be engaged in numerous mis- 
cellaneous transactions outside his store-keeping, and at his 
death, at an early age, left a substantial accumulation of 
property to his widow and numerous children. His life was 
a highly exemplary one, during which he appeared to avail 
himself of every opportunity for doing kind and obliging 
thinofs. An anecdote used to be told of his sagacious use of 
silence, in one of those cases where men are more frequently 
clamorous. A thief had deprived liim of a side of bacon, or 
some such thing, the loss of which had been perceived by 
himself alone. He wisely held his jieace till long after the 
event. A man who lived several miles distant called at the 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 21 

store and kindly commented upon the theft, and asked the 
Captain whether or not he had been able to detect the author. 
"Xever till this moment," was the crushing reply. "You are 
the very fellow I " 

On one Sunday afternoon in summer, his teamster came 
galloping into the village upon one of his French horses, 
driving the other before him. In an hour it became known 
to all the inhabitants that the wagon loaded with goods from 
Boston had been overset a few miles distant, a hogshead of 
molasses burst, and the teamster had hurried into town in 
this manner for vessels to save the wasting treacle. The tale 
was told and listened to as only people tell and listen, whose 
quiet lives yield but tew topics for animated discourse. Days 
after the event the minister, calling on Mrs. Webster, intro- 
duced it in conversation. Her reply was to express hope 
that it would be a warning to Sabbath breakers. But the 
minister was convinced it would have no such effect, *'for 
sinners will go on to their own destruction," And Mrs. 
Webster admitted that such was the truth. There was nnich 
discussion in the village, as to whether Captain Merrill was 
responsible in the sight of God, for the act of his servant, 
performed without special instructions, or whether the 
teamster having got within half a day's travel at the end of 
his journey, ought to have remained for Sunday to pass bv, 
or ratiier use a part of the holy season to reach his home. 

Capt. Merrill was so much esteemed by all that there 
was a prevailing disposition to solve all doubts in his favor, 
and to regret the loss of the molasses, rather than censure 
the loser for a merely constructive offense, if indeed anv 
such had been committed. 

Further down the road at the point at which it reaches the 
common, and on the right, or northerly side of the road, 
lived another notable lady, ^Ii"S. Bliss. f Her husband who 

tThe old Bli?s tavern, where Mr. Leith now lives. The tirst post 
office in Haverhill was kept in that building, during "Washington's 
administration. ^Lrs. Bliss was Mr. Livermore's grandmother. 



22 REiMINISCENCES Or 

had been a captain in the Massachusetts line during the war of 
the Revokition, died in 1818, leaving her with little, except 
the house, to continue the business of the variety shop that 
was in one corner of it. She did so in cheerful obedience to 
the necessities of the case, though she narrowed that business 
as soon as convenient to a few specialties of women's wear 
and adornment, within the circle so indicated. She felt that 
her taste was so correct as to enable her, and therefore to 
require her as a duty, to do better for her customers than 
merely to minister to their fjincies, and perpetuate their fol- 
lies by supplying the uncomely they demanded. So when a 
customer, instead of inquiring of the shopkeeper what it was 
proper to have, asked point blank for high heeled shoes, or 
fabrics of unsightly color, the answer was conveyed in terms 
of courtesy, strangely in contrast with the tone and counten- 
ance that reflected, and generally repressed forever the un- 
becoming fancy. True, the customer did not always " tremble 
like a guilty thing surprised," and nothing worse occurred 
than her retirement, and accommodation at some more 
largely furnished shop, and at the hands of more compliant 
shopkeepers. 

Mrs. Bliss was a church member, and would not yield to 
another in her loyalty to the minister and to the church. 
But she never sought eminence among the promoters of 
religion or education, or the dissemination of tracts and 
Bibles, though opposed to none of those things, and indeed 
a contributor to most of them. From her natural temper 
she was disinclined to associations, and unfit for their ways. 
In one other thing she differed from Mrs. Webster, who 
with much loving sympathy with the young and their amuse- 
ments in general, absolutely denounced dancing. It was in 
her eyes a sin in itself, and under no circumstances or con- 
ditions could it be other than a sin. jNIrs. Bliss, on the 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 23 

contrary, contended that, shocking as it must be for a 
church member to dance, there was much to excuse young 
people who had not professed religion, indulging in that 
amusement. It was as innocent amusement as any, and 
more so than many that were generally permitted. Its forms 
were based on courtesy, and tended to animate and preserve 
good manners. Persons going to a ball perfectly under- 
stood that they must wear nice clothes, and practice the 
most perfect manners possible. There is reason to believe 
that these sentiments, though expressed with modesty, and 
with a desire to avoid giving offense, impaired in some degree 
the good lady's standing in the church, and held her without 
its interior circle and the atmosphere of the associations. 

She however found society. The best of it was not of this 
world, but of the enchanted world of the author of Waverly, 
His books were making their appearance in quick succes- 
sion, and were read by no one with more intense enjoyment 
than by her. Her next greatest pleasure seemed to be in 
repeating their contents to her customers and visitors. Books 
were then less accessible in Haverhill than now, and novels 
were more than proportionately few. 

Seventy years ago you would have said, "The Eastern 
stage goes out on Mondays and Fridays at four o'clock in 
the morning." Such was the phrase, and such was the fact. 
Before that hour the driver went throua-h the villag-e to knock 
at the doors from which the passengers were booked, and with 
the butt of his great whip-stock ffxiled not to awaken them, 
and many of the neighbors as well. But these all knew the 
cause of the din, and though not without neighborly interest 
in it, soon composed themselves to sleep again. 

The "coach," as we now say, did go out from St. Clair's 
inn. The board which swung at a great height in front of it 
was lettered "Grafton Hotel, J. W. St. Clair," and other- 



24 REMINISCENCES OF 

wise embellished. The coaches used were sundry, of abnor- 
mal forms, tentative in the direction of utility and comeliness, 
and rejected experiments apparently, and therefore adapted 
to an enterprise which was deemed also an experiment ex- 
posed to like failure. But the managers were obliging toward 
their customers, were persevering and faithful, and so in the 
distant end, successful. 

This coach, starting at four o'clock in the mornmij with 
the mail, no larger than could easily be carried upon the 
driver's arm, and tossed into its place, (where he seemed to 
keep it by sitting upon it), together with the passengers 
arrived at Morse's inn in Rumney for a breakfast that seemed 
late. After which it proceeded by Mayhew's turnpike, and 
that part of Salisbury now called Franklin, to Concord, 
which it reached about six in the afternoon, unless retarded 
by adverse conditions of weather — spring and autumn mud, 
and so forth. We were draw^n in successive and inter- 
changeable teams by Smart, May and Hewston. 

Smart was accounted the best whip, and, proud of the dis- 
tinction, upset his coach, and was run away with by his 
horses more frequently than the rest. Col. Silas May was 
of serious demeanor, like a deacon, and not otherwise remark- 
able, but finally to escape trouble in some forgotten form, ran 
off. But Hewston witched the world by means of an im- 
mensely long tin horn, which announced the coming of the 
stage, as if it were a band of music. 

I shall not forget the gamut of that amazing instrument, 
the tramp of the four steaming horses, the rattle and creak of 
the coach, and the jingle of the chains, and other gear, as the 
man drove by us boys that had gone out on a summer's 
evening to meet it. We had been released from school, had 
our tea, and the cool and tranquil evening that disposed us 
often to that quiet pastime, took like effect apparently with 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 25 

the older generation, that failed not to be largely represented 
at the Grafton hotel. The passengers who chose to stop there 
with their baggage, having been discharged, the coach was 
then driven down across the common to Towle's inn. 

One word in memory of two of the horses. They were 
widely known as Paddy and Hunter, and earned their fame 
by out-tasking many a pair of wheelers they led in the ser- 
vice, to which they were devoted. I know how much they 
were esteemed by Robert Morse their owner, and I have com- 
fort in the knowledge of his humane disposition, that their old 
age was cared for. 

The Bath stage was driven by Tim Hurd. The vehicle 
was open, with the exception of a hood or bellows-top that 
protected the back seat, and was drawn by two horses that 
were made always to leave and enter the village on a gallop. 
I thought the affair to be a smart one, till I was taken to 
Bath as a passenger, when I came to suspect that the gallop 
was taken up for show. It was followed by a very languid 
pace tiie rest of the way. This stage "went out" and re- 
turned on Sundays, and on AVednesdays it proceeded as far as 
Lancaster, returning the next day. 

The Hanover four-horse stage was driven by Swasey ; 
leaving Haverhill twice a week, in the afternoon, and re- 
turning early in the morning. There were in addition, the 
Grafton stage, which found it's way to Concord through 
Canaan, but its existence was fitful ; and the St. Johnsbury 
stage, of which I remember nothing. Hoitt, a man of storm- 
defying countenance, drove the former, and caused to be 
painted upon one of the panels, "Wide Awake." But to 
no effect, for the thing passed away, and with it Hoitt's oc- 
cupation. 

The mail brought the Boston Recorder, a religious paper, 
edited by Willis ; and the Boston Courier, edited by Buck- 



26 REMINISCP^NCES OF 

ingham : and I think no others from without the state. The 
New Hampshire Patriot had no rival in Concord, although a 
religious paper called the Observer was then published. 

Sylvester T. Goss came to Haverhill a little later, and re- 
newed the attempt, in which several had failed, to establish a 
newspaper there. It was not of his paper, but of a prede- 
cessor, that Dr. Moore, the wag of the period, said to the 
printer, after inquiring most kindly, and expressing deep 
interest concerning the enterprise; "My dear fellow, you 
plainly have a good deal of work in getting your paper 
through your press, and if it will relieve you in any degree, 
I beg you will not scruple to send me the paper without the 
printing. It will really be all the same to me, you know." 

It will be a slight anachrocism, but I will pause to name 
two men who assisted in Goss's printing office — Buzzell 
Dow, who afterwards became rich by printing Bibles, and 
other religious books, and another whose name I never quite 
knew, but who was known as Goss's Dandy, so wisely was 
his apparel shaped and worn. His hat was white beaver, 
bell-shaped to extravagance ; his coat, swallow-tail, blue, 
with brass buttons, and black velvet collar ; waistcoat of 
white marseilles, with border of blue vignette, most flam- 
buoyant ; trousers of white linen, wonderfully full in the legs, 
and down four inches from the shoe, the interval being 
occupied with white cotton hose. 

His pastime after working hours was to appear in these 
clothes, in and about taverns and shops where spirits were 
abroad, to converse with those spirits, and give voice to their 
insi)irations. I never saw him fight, but certainly heard him 
intimate on such occasions that he could fight, and would do 
so, if provoked. 

I do not know what title Mons. Dorion has to be cele- 
brated in this history. But Dorion made occasional visits to 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 27 

Haverhill, and passed weeks there, innocently enough, so far 
as I ever heard. Why he came, and why, being there, he 
chose to go, was not apparent. Some said that he held a 
mortgage upon the possessions of a gentlemen at that time 
admitted to be less affluent than of old, but still residing in 
his own fair house, and in countenance. He was a French- 
man, (Canadian, I suppose) and did not go to meeting, al- 
though his clothes were excellent, and fully up to the require- 
ments of public worship. 

He was at one time taken sick, and on that occasion was 
accosted by some good person on the subject of religion. 
He said that he had sometimes, in view of the uncertainty of 
the issue of his sickness, thought of repentance, but was re- 
strained by the further thought that if he should get well, he 
would be very sorry for having so unadvisedly and prema- 
turely made that preparation for death. 

He carried a gold repeater which he used to hold to my 
ear. 

A more i-emarkable character was a West Indian Spaniard, 
who occassionally made his appearance. His name I could 
never quite master. He was a young and decidedly hand- 
some man, of the dark ty[)e. He drove in a chaise two 
grays, tandem, the leader trained to gallop while the other 
kept the trot. He had for a companion a Mr. Wilson, an 
older man, and was free with his money, of which there is 
evidence that he had good store. He lived in a log house 
which he had built in a forest, in or near the town of Lon- 
donderry, and furnished and finished in a style of great 
luxury. His eccentricities unhappily shaded toward excesses. 
I know nothing of the end.* 

* Morrison's history of Windham has an account of :i character 
who is probably the same man as Mr.Livermore mentions. He states 
that in May 1823, F. L. Bissell, an East Indian came to Windham. 
He was a native of Sumatra, He had an English education, and was 



28 REMINISCENCES OF 

James I. Swan* died about 70 years ago, at an early age 
to have achieved the reputation for extraordinary professional 
ability which attached to him. He did not reside at Haver- 
hill, but he married the daughter of Mr. Sprague, who built 
and occupied the house in that place between the Nelson and 
Williams houses, which Mr. Sloan afterwards occupied. 

George Woodward was among the most conspicuous fig- 
ures in Haverhill, and in courtesy of manner, and in winning 
kindness toward everyone, was held by many to be the model 
of a gentleman. He had been, and it is my impression that 
he was, seventy years ago, clerk, or the assistant clerk of 
the superior court, and at a later date became clerk of com- 
mon pleas. He lived in the house at the south end of the 
common, that afterwards became the residence of Mr. Joseph 
Bell, kept his office there, and eked out a greatly reduced 
income by taking to board the boys sent from a distance to 
attend the academy. 

In early life he had been in good practice, and also the 
cashier of Coos bank, whose disastrous failure brought down 
the cashier and board of directors, and drew upon them all 
the imputations that commonly dog the steps of misfortune. 
A good deal of litigation, tending to the damage of their fair 
fame, followed the break-down of tiie bank, but Mr. Wood- 
heir to a large estate, which was in the hands of a Mr. White of 
Salem, Mass., his guardian. At this time he was about IS or 19. 
After camping out for awhile, he with some intimates built a log 
cabin, rough on the outside, but finished in the most elaborate man- 
ner within, on the shore of Mitchell's pond. In time he built a fine 
stable, and kept several teams, spending money liberally, and attract- 
ing many guests b}' his fine liciuors. In the course of several years 
he used iip his money, and disappeared. The place was kept up as a 
sort of tavern for some time, but fell into disrepute, and decay. The 
loo; house stood until 1SG5. The fish pond still nnna\n».— History vf 
Windhain, pp. 251-253. 

* James I. Swan, born in Haverhill in 1780. Read law with Aldeu 
Sprague. Admitted to the bar in 1802. In practice at Lisbon till 
1807. At Bath till death. Married Elizabeth Sprague. No children 
survived him. — Bench and Bar of Grafton Countij. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 29 

ward's good spirits appeared not to have forsaken him ; and 
according to Mr. Mason, who was his counsel, he was too 
intent upon psalm singing to bestow proper attention upon his 
case, at times when such attention was most urgently required, 
and might most reasonably have been expected. 

At the time to which these reminiscences relate, he sat in 
the gallery with the singers on Sundays, and appeared to 
alternate with Mr. Webster in the lead of that performance. 

I must here insert a parenthesis, to record that Mr. Chap- 
man, the gardener, performed upon the bass viol, which was 
the only instrument used in their solemnities. 

Mr. Woodward conveyed his family to meeting in a wagon 
having two seats, and often took me up on a hot summer's 
day, with a considerate kindness I cannot forget. I know 
not through what causes, or by what influences impelled, Mr. 
Woodward became a Methodist, and taking up his abode in 
the Noah Davis house, between Mrs. Bliss' house and the 
academy, opened its doors to the brethren of that persuasion, 
with such liberality that he was commonly at his wits end 
for means to feed and clothe his own family. He could not 
re-make himself, nor efface the gentleman that he was, but 
it is to be confessed that his style became in a measure 
debased, and he left Haverhill a changed man.* 

I inherited from both my parents a very kind regard for 
him, and should be most happy to know that his numerous 
children had been prosperous, in spite of the inevitable neg- 
lect of their education, ensuing upon his eccentricites, and 
the forfeiture of position that a different course might have 
preserved for them at the outset of their lives. 

* George Woodward, born in Hanover in 1776, son of Judge Beza- 
leel Woodward. His mother was a daughter of the 1st President 
Wheelock. Dartmouth, 1793. Came to Haverhill, 1805. Removed 
to Lowell, Mass., in 1826. Died in 1836. Judge Warren Currier of 
St. Louis, married one of his daughters. — History of Haverhill p. 259. 



30 REMINISCENCES OF 

A winding up of the affairs of the Coos bank was entrusted 
to Mr. John Nelson,* a lawyer, who passed the whole of his 
professional life in Haverhill, where he died May 3, 1838, at 
the age of about sixty years. The trust was of considerable 
magnitude, and was executed by him in a manner that per- 
fectly satisfied the parties interested, and made, it is said, his 
own fortune ; that is to say, as much as, with his moderate 
desires and j)rudent management, created a state of perfect 
independence. At the epoch to which tliese reminiscences 
refer, Mr. Nelson appeared to be in rather feeble health. 
His form was slender, and his walk remarkably slow, so that 
the boys at safe distances made their remarks upon those 
peculiarities. The next winter found him largely engaged 
in out-of-door employments, which had the desired effect of 
restoring his health. I well remember seeing him driving 
home his horses and sled loaded with wood, keeping his 
position at the hind end by holding on to the stakes. He 
was a man of very few words, and a gentle and somewhat 
mutffed voice. If brilliancy of speech and wit may be 
regarded as forming a very strong contrast with such man- 
ners, then that contrast was presented by ]Mrs. Nelson, wliose 
countenance was always radiant, and whose speech was in- 
formed Avith good sense, and the fruits of intelligent observa- 
tion. She was very much a gentlewoman, had no affecta- 
tions or pretensions, but a summary way of dealing with 
those affectations objectively. 

During our annus mirahilis, and lono^ before and after, 
Ephraim Kingsbury was recorder of deeds for the county, 
and kept his office in his house, which was then upon the road 

*.John Nelson, born iu Exeter in 1778; Dartmouth, 1800; first wife 
was Susannah, daughter of Gen. Eben Brewster of Hanover; second 
wife was a daufihter of John Leverett of Windsor, Vt. ; one of their 
daughters married Chief Justice Ira Perley of Concord; the late John 
L. Nelson, United States Circuit Judge, of Worcester, Mass., was his 
sou. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 31 

leading northward from the Corner, and a few doors removed 
from the Grafton bank, that low white building so alluring 
to burglars, and so unresisting. Kingsbury was by nature 
a recorder. His pale, cleanly and somewhat plethoric figure 
and gray hair were at ease among the folios in his custody. 
His script, as plain and regular as type, was a model for 
such uses as his office required. His manners bland and easy, 
but rather sad than gay, marked a temper most irascible. 
So long and so well had he exercised his office that it seemed 
to have become his own, so that when your pestilent politics 
set in, and bestowed it in reward of services, at that time the 
act seemed unnatural. 

The salary, or whatever was the form of emolument at- 
tached to the office, had not yielded the means for the modest 
support of the man who had devoted himself to it, and a 
small deal in stationery and the taking of boarders had given 
him but a wretched supplement, so that w^hen the politician 
came to claim his own, poor Kingsbury was poor indeed. 
But it was after all benevolent fury that dealt the blow, for 
he rallied, and found in the great city a better desk, at which, 
after many years, he died.* 

He had somehow incurred the censure of the church. I 
am convinced that his offense was not a flagrant one, because 
Mr. Powers the minister thought it necessary to bestow a long 
afternoon sermon in justification of the decree of excommu- 
nication which came in for the "Amen." I distinctly re- 
member listening to the good minister's oratory with more 
reverence than understanding, and, according to my best 
recollection and belief, had not the faintest idea of what it was 
all about, but that it differed from a sermon in the terminal 
phrase, and in the perpetual recurrence of "Mr. Kings- 

*Ephraim Kingsbury, born in 1775; Dartmouth, 1797; came to 
Haverhill 1799; removed about 1834; died in New York. 



32 REMINISCENCES OF 

bury." The other boys remarked how the minister kept 
saying "Mr. Kingsbury," "Mr. Kingsbury." The result 
was that the gentleman so unpleasantly discoursed against, 
from that time forth pointed his horse's head in the opposite 
direction, and became one of Mr. Blake's* congregation at 
Piermont. 

At this large distance of time, and giving due allowance 
for difference between boyhood and old age in their faculties 
of perception and judgement, I think I am safe in saying 
that Mr. Blake was a man of extraordinary force in the ])ul- 
pit. It was from his discourses that I derived my earliest 
notion of eloquence, and my first perceptions generated by 
genuine thought and set on fire by the passion of the hour. 
His introduction was so deliberate, and with pauses so long 
as to alarm a stranger as to the issue of it all. Meantime he 
would lean upon the cushion, looking downward and wag- 
ging his head from side to side, appearing to be chasing 
thoughts far distant. By degrees these wanderers seemed to 
come scattering homeward, and soon you found them ranged 
in loo-ical form, and in vollies of fine declamation. He was 
reported to have concluded his sermon upon Emily Towle 
with Cato's Soliloquy. For such audacious doings and such 
popular fascination I believe the ministers of his association 
hated him as much as the dead can hate the living — which 
is not at all. The poor man was starved out of Piermont, 
and migrated with his hardy sons to Ohio. 

It was a long, long, straight road of gentle ascent, at the 
end of which Piermont meeting house seemed to recede as I 
approached it on sunny days, and I can certainly trust my 
memory with the record it returns to me, of the weariness of 
my walk, and of the motives that induced it. It was not 

*Eev. Robert Blake, a native of Scotland, minister at Piermont, 
1819-183G. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 33 

mere boy's sense of freedom and tendency to adventure. I 
was fascinated by the speech I went to listen to. 

Emily Towle was one of the bevy of girls of my own age, 
and died at the age of about eighteen.* When I last saw 
her, the disease of which she died had just begun its work by 
transmitting her into an object of surpassing beauty. Her 
coevals were Mary and Sarah Bartlett, Harriett Merrill, and 
Charlotte Osgood. 

The small differences of age and localities that limit the 
intimacies of boys and girls disappear as they become older. 
But my census, remember, was taken seventy years ago, and 
is rigid at the number of skirls I have named. I then deemed 
them so fair that it is not easy now to doubt they were other- 
wise. If there was illusion in the case, I do not wish to be 
disenchanted. 

A short distance beyond Piermont meeting house lived the 
widow of Dr. Wellman, mother as well of a number of beauti- 
ful daughters. I remember the sad announcement that her 
only son had been brought home from Boston a raving 
maniac. He remained more than twenty years in terrible 
imprisonment in one of the chambers in his mother's house, 
where after an hour's lucid interval he died, remembering 
only in the most vague and imperfect way the large span of 
•larkness and the trouble he had caused, and begged his 
mother to forgive, f 

* Emily H. dau. of Edw. Towle, died May 22, 1829, aged 19.— Cem. 

t Wellman family in cemetery on the river road, Piermont. Mr.Martin 
says that their bodies were removed to that place several years ago. 
Dr. Lemuel Wellman, Nov. 14, 1815,45 yrs, 10 mos, 11 dys; Esther 
Steele Kussell Wellman, born at Beauford, Conn., in 1770, died in 
New York City Dec 1, 1851; Lemuel Wellman, died July 8, 1842, 46; 
Amelia Wellman, died Mar 26, 1814, 11 yrs, 29 dys; Maiy Patterson, 
widow of Dr. Thomas Russell, born at C^ornwall, Conn., Jan. 10, 1743, 
died in Maloue, N. Y., Dec. 7, 1822; Dr. Thos. Russell, born at Beau- 
ford, Conn., Oct. 14, 1727, died in Piermont in 1S03; Electa, their 
daughter, died Sept. 11, 1783, 15 days; Anthony Wellman, sou of 
Antliouv and Electa B Morse, died March 12, 1834," 3 yrs; Thos. Rus- 
sell, died Oct. 20, 1841, 24 mos. 



34 REMINISCENCES OF 

One of the daughters became the wife of John S. Wright, 
and mother of three sons. She died before her husband left 
Haverhill. The dispute of Eben Wright's will was a notori- 
ous recent event in Boston. Hester Wellman was beautiful 
and in every way charming. So indeed was Brittannia, the 
youngest of the sisters, but in my eyes not quite so mucli so. 
An older sister married Anthony Morse,* and was the 
the mother of Mrs. Berg,f and grandmother to Lilly Berg, 
if I am correctly informed. Pamelia Osgood was a pretty 
and attractive young lady in 1820, and so were the four 
daughters of Mr. Gookin, who lived opposite the meeting 
house in the Ladd neighborhood. Laura Bartlett was, dur- 
ing that year, married to Jacob Bell who kept tlie store that 
had been Gen. Montgomery's at the Oliverian Brook. 

In the realm of beauty at the same date, was Augusta St, 
Clair, who soon after became the wife of Ezra C. Ilutchins, 
then of Bath, and afterwards of Boston. 

I find a difficulty in assigning a social rank to the few 
young ladies of the age of those mentioned, because if the 
young ladies ever assembled in circles held by themselves to 
be select, I never knew it. 

Older persons were accustomed to dwell with regret u[)on 
the memory of the times when the Si)rague8, the Mont- 
gomerys, the Dows, etc., formed a select and joyous com- 
pany. I might name those whose eyes were bright at the 
period in review, but who preferred to sit as near as possible 
to the windows, for the benefit, of course, of its better light, 
and who were by that means enabled to report at night the 



* Miss E. L. Morse, daughter of Authotiy Morse, and Dr. Wellman's 
oldest daughter owned the house, and lived alone in it, and was found 
dead in bed there .June 12, 1892. She had visited Europe several times, 
and had just returned from spendinj; the winter in Ualtimore. She 
was buried in Greenwood cemetery, Xew Vorlv. 

t Mrs. I>erg owns the old Wellman mansion, and spends her sum- 
mers there. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 35 

names of all the bachelors who had made their transit through 
the day. 

It was to no effect that Mrs. Bliss assured them that such 
was not the way, and that fair forms did not gain attractive- 
ness by being alway in evidence at the windows, nor did 
young men become fascinated by merely being looked at and 
talked about. 

Mr. McGaw and Mr. Cartland were law students ; Alfred 
Osgood came at rare intervals from Boston to visit his kin- 
dred. I cannot remember another young man wiiose name 
I could insert without grave terms of disqualification. Yet 
such there may have been. 

On Wednesdays, about noon, with great regularity, two 
forms came from opposite directions into the village, and 
drove to Towle's inn. One was Mr. Payson* who had left 
his home in Bath at ten o'clock, and halted at the half-way 
house at Horse Meadow for repose of himself and beast, and 
for a mere taste of mine host's excellent rum. For such was 
the liquor he preferred. He was affable by nature, and the 
drop tasted made him yield the more to that fine instinct. 
Politics, money, agriculture, are among the themes on which 
a gentleman is free to converse, is mdeed expected to con- 
verse, with any man whose relations with him are not merely 
servile ; and by the time he is ready to proceed another drop 
is required. 

*Moses P. Payson, born at Rowley, Mass., 1771; Dartmouth, 1793; 
read law with Alden Sprague of itaverhill; admitted to the bar in 
1797; at Bath 1798 till death, Oct. 10, 1828, aged 57 yrs, 10 inos, 21 
days; represeutative in legislature; ])resident of seuaxe ; presideut of 
Graftou (Jouiity bank; married Hannah Perley in 1798, she died in 
1832; one of their daughters married Hon. Jonathnn Smith to wliose 
practice Mr. Livermore succ(!eded. Mr. Payson built the great brick 
house at the south end of Bath village, whicli cost .$i;?,000, an iimnense 
sum in those days. — Bench and Bar of Grafton County ; Memorial Ser- 
mon by Rev. David Sutherland. 

Mr. Payson made a profession of religion, and joined the Congre- 
gational church about a year before he died. 



36 EEMINISCENCES OF 

Driving into the village he knows everybody and the compre- 
hensive sweep of his courteous bow embraces everything visible 
within the boundaries of the common. He finds the rum at 
Mr. Towle's good, as he had often found it before. It is the 
day of the stated meeting of the directors of the Grafton 
bank, and he is the president of that board. Indeed he is 
the president of everything he belongs to, capable of a pre- 
sidino^ officer. Moderator of the town meetinij in Bath as a 
matter of course, and only a few votes are cast to satisfy the 
exigencies of the law requiring an election by ballot. He was 
always president of the senate of New Hampshire during the 
many years that he sat in that chamber, and when all the 
world met at Windsor to vote the Connecticut river into the 
list of navigable streams and to take orders for the removal 
of obstructions, Mr. Pay son was placed in the chair. It was 
his courtesy of manner, his tact and good common sense that 
were well-known, and qualified him for such places. His 
mind was not largely informed, but it was safe and sound 
within its own sphere, and was plagued with no half-lights, 
no misleading passions. 

It should not seem strange if the success that he won by 
these valuable practical forces, brought on a little pompous 
vanity in the end. But neither the success nor the credit 
which he won impaired the amiable disposition, the even 
temper, or the hospitable manners that made him with but 
one unhappy exception a most agreeable man. According 
to a fashion that vvas not in all cases fatal to the strons; men 
of his day, he began by eleven o'clock and continued through 
the day, it is said, tasting New England rum in very small 
quantities and nmch diluted. He died at not much over fifty, 
happily before his habit could be called intemperance, but too 
late to restore its ravages upon his system. 

He built an expensive house, for which he was somewhat 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 37 

censured. But he was at that time in the prime of life, with 
fair prospects, and an estate which could well have submitted 
to that extent of depletion, had his life been lengthened to 
the ordinary span. He took great delight in the hospitable 
demonstrations that the large house favored, and which, 
wisely used, go far toward making and retaining friends. 

His early death defeated plans which if too hopeful cannot 
safely be condemned as irrational, and of the considerable 
estate which he accumulated not a farthing now remains in 
the hands of any of his lineage. 

A differently constituted man was Mr. Britton, who for a 
like purpose, drove into the village with equal punctuality 
from the opposite direction on the same days. He was tall, 
well formed, and to the end of a life of seventy-seven years 
was an erect and firm man. He always appeared clean and 
well dressed in the conservative style of apparel, that no 
token should be wanting to denote his aversion to unseasoned 
innovation. At that time he wore his hair in a queue, but 
abandoned that fashion a few years before his death, for some 
cause unknown to me other than the lack of an abundance 
of the necessary material, for such existed and retained its 
color to the last, and but sparingly interspersed with white. 
His manner was gay, his humor at once kind and cynical. 
There was nothing about him that should have repelled any- 
body. Yet he was never a candidate for popular suflfrage, 
nor held any public office whatever, but that of justice of the 
peace. And the functions of that office were with him of the 
most formal manner only. He aimed at no demonstrations, 
and was eminently a man of most impregnable secrecy. He 
was never charged with unfair practices, whether at the bar, 
or in his private transactions. He accumulated an estate and 
transmitted it to his children in safe investments, the nature 
and amount of which impertinent inquiry has thus far failed 
to discover. 



38 REMINISCENCES OF 

I have endeavored to portray the man objectively, repress- 
ing with difficulty the strong emotions that spring from the 
recollections of the charms he imparted to many convivial 
hours, of his generous hospitality, of his cleanly and gentle- 
manly life, of his personal kindness to myself. 

The Superior Court was hulden annually in May, and the 
event was one of deeper and more pervading impression than 
can easily be described. The best parlor and the best bed 
room, closed and secluded through the rest of the year, were 
opened in every house. The paper curtains were rolled up, 
the fireboards were removed from the fire place they had kept 
sealed, the year's gathering of dust removed, and all things 
put into working order ; so that what seemed sacred and 
sepulchi-al before, took on light and cheerfulness. 

Such was the preparation of almost any house for the re- 
ception of boarders for "court week." A dollar a day was 
paid by the judge and lawyers for the most sumptuous ac- 
commodations provided, and for jurors, witnesses and others, 
the scale was adjusted in a reasonable manner. It was usual 
for two gentlemen to occupy one bed, and the pairing was a 
permanent arrangement extending over a succession of years. 
The court and most of the bar, and the sheriff were commonly 
lodged at Mrs. Bliss's, who sent for Mrs. Fifield to come in 
and do the cooking. 

Gentlemen for the most part came with their own horses 
to court, and proportionate stir was created in the barns and 
cow sheds, to meet the great event of the year. 

Among the lawyers were Phineas Walker of Plymouth and 

Gilbert of Hanover, who always slept together in a 

very small room in the last mentioned house. Walker had 
the pretentious air that he supposed to be patrician. His 
figure was portly, and so poised as to create a doubt of his 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 39 

ever seeing his own feet, and to give credit to a story in 
vogue of his having fallen over a cow that was lying in his 
path at mid-day. His powers of narration made him some- 
times good company, especially when his stories were eked 
out with inventions not easily winnowed from the truth either 
by others or himself. During a few years antecedent to 1819 
he was the only practicing lawyer in the eastern part of the 
county, and adventured upon measures which he was com- 
pelled to abandon after Mr. Grant came to Plymouth. Grant 
found out that Walker was in the habit of usins: one torit 
only for a great number of actions, and worried him exces- 
sively one day by moving an order upon him to file his writ. 
' ' What does the young man want to see my writ for ? It is 
just like any writ. Did he never see one?" 

Walker delighted in a vast white waist-coat, very broad 
shirt frills, and to spatter the same with tobacco juice which 
he cast from behind a cravat so high and stiff as to support 
his chin, and minister to the strut which delighted both him- 
self and the beholders. 

Mr. Grant died at a very advanced age so poor and so 
solitary, for he survived his excellent wife and daughters, 
that a tender charity interposes to dim the memory of the 
earlier stages of his life. 

If he was profoundly ignorant of the law, and wholly 
unequipped for the professional acumen to which he made 
ridiculous pretensions, Walker's ignorance, equally pro- 
found, was displayed in the assumption of power over facts 
and principles comparable only to the genius of the German 

Abiathar G. Brittou, lawyer at Orford in 1796; died at Boston in 
1851. Phiueas Walker, admitted to the bar in 1796; at Plymouth until 
1832; Judge of Probate several years. Stephen Grant, admitted to 
bar in 1803; at Plymouth till 1829, and from 1844 to 1846; died and 
buried at Plymouth. 



40 REMINISCENCES OF 

Emperor, who pronounced himself sifperg7'am7nattcus, and 
competent to deal with the forms of speech in as absolute a 
manner as he did with the persons of his subjects and with 
their estates. To Walker's wild assumptions and citations 
of books he had never seen, even in their bindings, Grant 
would reply with quibbles without point, sharp intimations 
and knowing looks. 

A very different man was Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, then 
very young in the profession, and of distinguished abilities. 
But the inherent impediments to success at the bar, I fear, 
so far prevailed as to make that promise "of none effect." 
He was, however, highly respectable in the level to which 
he adhered, prepared his cases ably and knew enough 
law for his purpose. But Rogers was, physically, always 
rather infirm, and was deficient in the sort of force one re- 
quires for putting himself on evidence in the throng. He 
was a man of fine sensibilities towards the beautiful aspects 
of nature, and expressed himself on such matters in grace- 
ful language. 

His literary taste had been cultivated to the extent of the 
narrow range of books accessible in those days. He sang 
with a fine voice with truth and feeling the songs of Burns, 
Moore, and the like. His conversation was always 
attractive for its wit and genial responsiveness. He found 
pleasure in the society of ladies and made himself agree- 
able to them.* 

*N. P. Rogers, born at Plymouth, N. H., June 3, 1794, died at 
Concord, Oct. 16, 1S4G; Dartmouth. 1814; studied law with llichard 
Fletcher; opened a law office at Plymouth; married a daughter of 
Judge Daniel Farrand, who was a lawyer and very prominent citizen 
of iSJewbury from about 1788 to 1800, when he removed to Burling- 
ton, where he died, 1825. 

IJogers removed to Concord in 1834, where he became editor of the 
Henthl of Freedom, and was one of the earlier abolitionists in com- 
pany with Pillsbury, Garrison, and others. See Pillsbury's ''Acts of 
the Anti-Slavery Apostles," and Garrison's Life; also Osgood's 
White Mountain Guide for his descriptions of scenerj^. 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 41 

From outside the county came Ezekiel Webster of Bos- 
cawen, Bartlett of Portsmouth, and Fletcher of Boston, all 
whose forms remain fixed upon my memory. Parker Noyes 
of Salisbury, whom I saw, but of whose form I remember 
nothing, was a man of acknowledged abilities. It is 
probable that there were others, not named in these remi- 
nescences, but they are not alive to reproach my forgetful- 
ness. 

Richardson, Green and Woodbury comprised the Superior 
Court. They were attended in going to and coming from 
the court by Col. Brewster, the sheriff, wearing a coat with 
brass buttons and a red collar, and bearing a fine dress 
sword. Two deputies bearing maces also attended the 
judges. Richardson and Green were both lame and halted 
in their gait. But the maces and the sword and the red 
collar were enough to dignify greater blemishes, and so we 
all gazed and spoke with bated breath, if at all. 

The terms of court, bringing together from various parts, 
from town and country, gentlemen thoroughly known to each 
other, were occasions of conviviality. Because they were 
well known to one another this conviviality was free, but 
because they were in general gentlemen it never became 
coarse. Outsiders familiar with the general demeanor and 
lordly form of Ezekiel Webster, would hardly believe, if 
told, that he would join his double bass to the tenors and 
other supplementaries of the harmonics in singing the fable 
of the bag and the apple tree, or the formal words of a 
'■^ caputs''' to the music of an oratorio. 

Rogers and Britton, with others, gave parties. There 
was a little drinking and the decanters of wine and 
brandy were at all times in evidence in the parlor of the 
boardino; house and on the dinner table. The tradition of 



42 REMINISCENCES OF 

jNIr. Moody's formula in Strafford County when, with a rap 
of his cane he called the waiter to the foot of the stairs, was 
living a few years ago. "Waiter, bring a bottle of rum, a 
bottle of brandy, a pitcher of water, a bowl of sugar, four 
teaspoons, and a pack of cards." 

But in the county of Strafford customs were preserve(} 
that had disappeared from Grafton. 

Britton would, term after term, recite his story of the 
"blue-jay" that the boy and his father set a trap for, in 
marvellous imitation of the tone and sniffle of the conven- 
tional Methodist minister or convert, relating his "experi- 
ence." Nobody ever wearied of it. It was new every 
morning and fresh every evening. 

I have not the temerity of attempting to reproduce 
Rogers' story of Mr. Grant's settlement of the estate of 
James Little. It was the great event of Grant's life. He 
had reduced the assets to money, paid the debts, and was in 
possession of twelve hundred dollars to be paid to Mr. 
AVm. Little of Boston. He put it into a "strong box," 
which he placed in his sleigh box and conveyed it to 
Boston. In the morning he issued from the inn with the 
"strong box" under his arm, but had not gone far when he 
lost sight of the inn and became alarmed, remembering 
many shocking things he had heard of the immoralities of a 
city. He hailed the first man whose attention he was able 
to gain and asked him to be so good as to inform him 
whether the street they were in was a "reputable street." 
Finding at length the office of Mr. Little he inquired 
whether Mr. Wm. Little, the son of Mr. Robert Little, and 
nephew of Mr. James Little, lately of Campton, N. H., 
deceased, intestate, was at home. The gentleman so in- 
quired for was present and made himself known. Grant 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 43 

fixed his eye upon him and after stern examination became 
convinced that he was altogether too young a man to have 
so large a sum as twelve hundred dollars due to him, and 
that an imposition had been planned. "It is doubted," 
said he "and until proof of identity is forthcoming I shall 
decline to pay over tiie sum I hold as administrator, ' de 
bonis noiTL of James Little ? ' ' 

Such was the theme. But the music of the variations, 
alas ! has gone with the parties that uttered. The sequel to 
these mirthful memories is all too pathetic. 

Methodism, seventy years ago, was under the somewhat 
opprobrious shadow of orthodoxy, as entertained at Haver- 
hill Corner, and indeed, throughout, and even beyond the 
limits of New Hampshire. It had therefore to struggle, not 
only against sin, but against that opprobrium. Its ways 
were therefore earnest, and its demonstrations passionate 
and wild. But it was, plainly, a growing sect, and in the 
main united, although collateral lights did sometimes, and 
for a brief period, show themselves, claiming a greater 
freedom of usages and larger pretensions to authenticity. 
I think that no Methodist meeting house then existed within 
many miles of Haverhill, certainly there was none in the 
town, and except camp meeting, the district school houses 
were the only scenes of their animated worship, preaching, 
exhortation, rhapsodies, and proclamations of Divine 
favor. 

It was a great day when they gained permission of the 
proper authorities to use the Court House for such pur- 
poses, as it was a day of rebuke to the good ones in oppo- 
sition. But numbers were on the side of the Methodists, 
and so was the. voting power, as it was hinted to the cus- 
todian of the keys of the Court House. 



44 REMINISCENCES OF 

Among the " signal manifestations" at a camp meeting 
held at Warren was the conversion and entrancement of 
one Narcissa Griffin. Witnesses affirmed that her face 
shone, and the skin became preternatnrally smooth. But 
some one wrote in a newspaper that he believed every word 
of the story. He was in particular convinced that the skin 
of the young woman was perfectly smooth, for he "had felt 
a hundred of them and they all felt exactly so — smooth as a 
bone." The phrase became a bye-word. " Smooth as a 
bone" was upon everybody's tongue, while a diligent search 
was made for the author of the communication, which was 
denounced by one party as a wickedness, and by the other 
as something as bad. Tlie search became warm and the 
end was that the Rev. Grant Powers, in open meeting on 
Sunday, confessed himself to be the offender. I heard the 
confession, which was penitent in a measure, but which ex- 
cused the act by the example of the prophet who made use 
of irony and satire to confound the priests of the idols. 
But it was an unlucky act for Mr. Powers, who lost caste 
by it and soon after left the parish. 

The Methodist minister of those days commonly wore a 
white hat, and in preaching affected a singular tone, not 
wholly unlike a Gregorian chant, but really not quite resem- 
bling that or anything else. But that tone, so difficult 
apparently to catch, was necessary for attracting the confi- 
dence of the hearers in the spiritual attainments of the 
minister, and was singularly attractive of attention at least, 
if not of admiration in every case. 

It has been thought that education has damaged the influ- 
ence of the clergy of that sect by bringing them into con- 
formity with those of other sects. 

But it is rather probable that education "all around" has 



TIAVEUHILL CORNKPt. 45 

liiid somewhat to do with the change that has invaded the 
usages of that worthy and perfectly respectable order of 
Christians. 

The memory returns with pleasure even now to the quiet, 
frugal, domestic manners of Haverhill Corner seventy years 
ago. The two-storied white square houses with small dif- 
ferences in structure or size, each containing one best par- 
lor and chamber over it, both of which were closed fifty 
weeks in the year to the footsteps of man, and to the light 
of the sun, except as they might have been used for the 
storage of Sunday clothes, or other things likely to suffer 
from familiar touch, and as they were embraced in the an- 
nual house cleaning, when all the furniture was removed and 
the windows taken from their frames for washing. 

Mr. Kingsbury lighted his office with two tallow candles 
in iron candlesticks, and I am not pre[)ared to deny that the 
{)arlor8 of some of the inhabitants enjoyed the same quality 
of rather feeble light, or that there were here and there in 
rare instances to be found oil lamps. 

But in general the family contented themselves with one 
candle, around which they gat. The evenings were spent in 
the second parlor or dining room, and its benefits were 
shared by the maid of all work, without any feeling of ele- 
vation on her part, or constraint, or other annoyance on the 
part of the family. 

Some of the families included boys or young men who 
came from a distance to the academy, and paid from a dollar 
to a dollar and a quarter a week for their board and wash- 
ing, or in recompense for their accommodations took care of 
the horse, cow, fire wood, and performed the domestic ser- 
vices usually allotted to boys. Among these was Nathan 
Clifford, afterward a Justice of the United States Supreme 
Court. 



NOTES. 

The first execution in Haverhill was that of Thomas Powers a 
mulatto, iu 1796. He sold his body to Dr. Peterson of Boscaweu, 
and Dr. Lacy of HoiJkinton. "They rode to Haverhill and were 
present at the execution. Dr. Lacy skinned the body, had the skin 
tanned and a pair of boots made from it." — [History of Boscmoen, 
N. H., by Charles '"Carleton" Coffin, p. 428. 

The sermon at the execution of Powers July 26, 1726, was delivered 
by Rev. Noah Worcester of Thornton, N. H., from Luke xxiii. 32-34. 
It was printed and sold by N. Coverly of Haverhill. It contains 
thirtj'-three pages, seventeen of which are in exposition of the text, 
three were addressed to the criminal who seems to have been very 
young, and the rest to the audience. A copy is owned by Hon. 
Horace W. Bailey, Newbury, Vt. 

Mr. Powers was the last pastor to occupy the meeting house in 
Ladd street. This house was fashioned after the style of those days 
with square pews, a barrel shaped pulpit perched high upon the 
eastern side of the house, and over it a high sounding board sus- 
pended by a rod that seemed altogether too slender for the minister's 
safety. The deacon's seats of honor were iu front of the pulpit 
facing the congregation. The broad aisle ran straight from them to 
the front door. The seats on four sides of the pews were upon 
hinges, to be raised during prayers, coming down with clatter when 
it was ended. The children were often seated in front with their 
backs to the minister iu full view of their parents, so as to leave 
little chance for play. Besides the front door on the west side there 
was an entrance through the tower on the south end, from which 
also rose a stairway to the gallery which extended around three sides 
of the house. — [From Rev. J. L. Merrill's sermon, at the Centennial 
Celebration of the Haverhill Congregational church, Oct. 12-13, 1890, 
p. 14. 

Mr. Powers resided in the house on the bluff at the corner where 
the road to the cemetery and the one to Ladd street meet. 

The present church building was built by the Methodists, and 
when it was bought by the Congregationalists the people of the town 
wanted the old bell to come to this church, while the people on Ladd 
street strongly objected to their taking it. * * The people on Ladd 
street watched the old bell night and day for a time till the bell was 
finally left in the old place. Afterwards the old bell was removed to 
the new school house built there and the old church taken down. 



48 REMINISCENCES OF 

FROM THE AI>URESS OF J. H. PEARSON, CHICAGO, ILL., AT THE 
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. 

As I look back over the years I see the people as they took their 
places in church. The seats have been turned around since T attended 
here, the pulpit used to be at the other end under the gallery. The 
pews faced the minister, and the singers also faced the entrance of 
the church, so that everyone could see the people as tlwy came into 
church. I used to think that a nice arrangement, for we could see 
everyone, and how they looked when they came in. Now let me fol- 
low the pews and then* occupants as I remember them. I will com- 
mence with the wall pews at the southwest corner of the church, as 
Jt used to be. Of course I cannot recall all. Among those that I 
remember was Miss Eliza Cross. I think she used to sit in the cross 
pews in this corner. She was one of the leading members in the 
church, active in all christian work, especially interested and efficient 
in the Sunday school. She was an earnest advocate of the anti- 
slavery movement that was discussed in Ladd street, as far back as 
1840. Near her sat Jonathan and William Watson, who lived at the 
northern part of the town. They were not memliers of the church, 
but were regular attendants upon worship; good citizens, and men 
who commanded the respect of the eon^munity. 

The Woods family and Mrs. .lewett occupied the same pew, and 
were regular attendants upon public worship. The Johnston family 
occupied two pews, and were regular worshipers. They were an old 
substantial family, taking an honoral>le place among their neighbors. 
John Smith who was once pastor of the church, and Charles It. Smith, 
his son, had a seat between the Woods and Johnston families, and 
were regular attendants. They were an intelligent and respectable 
family, well-to-do farmers on Ladd street. 

Next, as 1 remember, came the famil}' of Hon. Joseph Bell. He 
was the most prominent lawyer in town, and one of the legal authori- 
ties of the state. He was a man of fine appearance, excellent busi- 
ness ability, and exercised a wide influence through all nothern New 
Hampshire. I can still see him as he used to walk into chui'ch, in his 
Sunday suit with ruffled shirt bosom, followed by his fine looking 
wife and children. He was not a member of tlie church, but attended 
]iretty regularly, and paid the most pew rent of the church. There 
was John Osgood on that side. He was known in the town as honest 
John Osgood. He and his family were all members — a very fine 
family, and good citizens. 

The Towle family and Dr. Morgan sat side by side. They were 



3477-61 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 49 

both proraineut iu the commuuity. \Vm. Barstow aud his family i-at 
on this side also. This was a large family, and very regular at 
church, aud interested in all the life of the church. Henry Towle, 
the jeweler, was also on that side of church. He was always iu 
church, aud came early. 

John L. Kix aud family were usuallj- iu church, but uot a^ early as 
some others. He was not a church member, but his wife was. He 
took an interest in church aftairs, and if all did not go right he gen- 
erally had something to say about it. Next that I remember was 
Nathan B. F'eltou aud John R. Reding and wife. They took a back 
seat. 1 remember it was a little higher than the other pews, so that 
they could overlook the whole congregation. They both were promi- 
nent people, and good citizens. 

Lyman Buck and familj-, Arthur Carleton and family, and James 
Bell aud family, occupied body pews iu church, and were all good 
members of society. The two Bell families were most prominent, 
and their appearance corresponding. I can well remember John L. 
Bunce as he used to come into church. He was a tall, fine looking 
man, straight as a caudle, aud with a military step that suited him 
well. He was a banker, and a leading man iu Haverhill. Then I can 
see Deacon Henry Barstow and his tall wife. He was rather short, 
and a little lame. He was a good man, aud had a fine family. He 
used to lead the singing iu prayer meetiug. 

Near these were James Atherton aud family, and Dr. Spaldiug and 
family. Deacon Chester Farmau had a front pew in the next row of 
seats. He lived farthest away from the church, and yet you would 
always find him aud his familj^ in their seats before any others. He 
was a very substantial and good christian man, and everyone knew 
just where to find Deacou Farman. I remember he had a peculiar 
souud to his cough, so that everyone knew it at once. 

Benjamin Merrill and family came next as I remember them. He 
had a large family, aud I thiuk they occupied two pews. Everybody 
in town knew Capt. "Ben" Merrill, as he was called. He was the 
king merchant iu the village, a bright, active man, with a bright, act- 
ive familj'. Deacon A. K. Merrill (his oldest sou) was made deacou 
when quite young,- aud remained a deacon till his death. * * * 

In this connection I recall the name of Russell Kimball, a prominent 
man in this church aud society. He was for many years the leading 
merchant in the village and his note was as good as that of any man 
iu town, if you could get it; but liis notes never floated round on the 
market; his credit was never questioned. John Nelson and family 
came next. He had one of the good old fashioned families that filled 






50 REMINISCENCES OF 

two pews when all were present. Mr. Nelson was a lawyer of 
ability, and was also a successful business man. His family were 
prominent in the village, intelligent and dignified. 

Among the leading families that came from Ladd street, 1 recall 
the Ladds and Herberts. Somewhere in the body-pews were John A. 
Page and his wife. Mr. Page was cashier of the Grafton County 
bank for a number of years after Mr. Bunce left. His father, Gov. 
John Page, left this church to join the Methodists, among whom he 
became a leader. Next to John A. Page, as I rememljer, came Dr. 
Ezra Dartlett and family. I can still see the venerable doctor with 
ruffled sliirt bosom and cane coming into the aisle at the head of his 
family, his portlj' wife following him, and the large family following 
in their order according to age. Most of the people were now in 
their seats; and when they saw the familj^ of Dr. Bartlett coming 
into church they looked upon as fine appearing and dignified a house- 
hold as could be found in that part of the country. 

Among the sturdy, well-to-do farmers from Piermout, I remember 
Caleb and George Stevens and Benjamin Carter. They lived on the 
town line of the village, and were excellent people. 

I must not forget to mention Peabody Webster. " Pee" Web- 
ster, we used to call him. He was a leading man in this church and 
society as long as he lived. 

Dr. Edmund Carleton sat behind Dr. Bartlett as I renunnber. He 
was deacon of the church at an early date, and remained a deacon till 
his death. He and his family were remarkable peoi)le. They were a 
devoted christian family, regular in attendance upon church, and 
ready for everj^ good work. I recall distinctly Dr. Carleton as he 
distributed the bread and wine at communion. 1 remember too, that 
he used to wear a red bandana handkerchief over his head as he sat 
in church. I suppose from taking cold; this made him quite a con- 
spicuous person in the congregation. Benjamin Swan and family 
were next behind Charles Carleton's, I think. His family were 
usually in their place. Mr. Swan was an upright man, and a good 
neighbor. His wife was a very pleasant lady. 

On the east side of the church Joshua Woodward and family, and 
Caleb Hunt and family sat, in two pews side by side. Mr. Woodward 
was a very prominent and intelligent man. He lived on Ladd street, 
and was an active worker in tue church and society. He was noted 
at an early day as an abolitionist, and took strong ground in favor of 
abolishing slavery. The Hunts were esteemed for their general in- 
telligence. Somewhere near the Hunts and the Woodwards sat 
General Pool and his family. Next to these came David Sloan and 
family, " Squire" Sloan, as he was called, was somewhat peculiar in 



HAVERHILL CORNER. 51 

many of his ways. But he was a good hiwyer, and a sensible man, 
and his family were like him. He was not a church member, but 
usually attended, coming in a little late, if I remember rightly. I can 
nest recall Hon. Samuel Page, with a well-filled pew of children on 
the east side of the church. He had an excellent family of children 
who settled as well-to-do farmers. * * * 

Hosea S. Baker and family came next. ^Ir. Baker was a pew-holder, 
and attended this church up to between 1845 and 1850. He was then 
induced to take charge of the Sunday school at the jNFethodist church, 
and afterward attended that church. He was a strong man, and left 
his mark on the community. 

Then came Moses St. Clair and family. "Major" St. Clair he was 
usually called. He had a large family of boys, and they were gener- 
ally in their places in church. * * The next pew was my father's, and 
next came Moses Dow and family. After his death, Vocamus Keith 
married his widow, and they were regular attendants at church. I 
remember they came to church in good season. 

Then came the pew of Jonathan S. Nichols and family. I could say 
much that is good about himself and family, but as he is still with us, 
I forbear. I will mention one family more, that of Michael Carleton. 
They usually occupied two pews, and were always in their places in 
good season. The father was an unassuming man, and so were all 
the family. They were quite devout worshippers in the house of 
God. I can still see Mr. Carleton when the minister was well on in 
his sermon, bow his head a little and close his eyes, but I suppose his 
ears were open to hear what was said. 

Before leaving my recollections of this church I must speak of the 
members of the choir. The leader was Timothy K. Blaisdell, who 
was conductor for many years, from about 1832 to 1845. It may well 
be said of him that he had no superior in that line in this part of the 
state. He was a merchant, a good citizen, and had a fine family. 

Sarah Merrill, or perhaps one of the other Merrill girls, (a sister of 
Deacon Merrill) played tlie organ. Miss Eleanor Towle (now Mrs. 
Chapman) was the leading soprano. The rest of the choir came from 
the Merrill and Barstow families, Samuel Ladd, Henry Towle, Nel- 
son Chandler, James Woodward, Jonathan S. Nichols, Miss Ellen 
McClary (now Mrs, Reding), two of James Bell's daughters, Callista 
Orpha and Luella Bell (now Mrs. Merrill). I think it is true that this 
church had then the best singing of any church in this part of the 
country at the time. 



It seems a little singular that neither Mr. Bittinger, nor any of the 



52 REMINISCENCES OF 

speakers at the auuiversary make any mention of a curious charge 
once made to the churcli at an ordination in Haverhill, by Rev. David 
Sutherland of Bath. I have seen the charge in print, but Rev. J. L. 
Merrill tells me that althougli it was a fact, he cannot tell which of 
the several ministers of Haverhill it was. 

There had been considerable trouble in the church, and several 
ministers followed each other in tlie course of a few years. Finally 
they settled one, and at the installation Mr. Sutherland had the charge 
to the people. The exercises had been very long, and when the 
charge came the audience feared a long sermon. Mr. Sutherland rose 
in the pulpit and said substantially as follows : " My friends, I sup- 
pose you expect me to give you a great charge. Yes, I am going to 
give you a great charge^ one you will all remember." Then opening 
the Bible he turned the leaves to the first epistle to the Thessalonians, 
and read, " And we beseech you brethren, to know them which 
labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; 
And to esteem them very highly for their work's sake — and be at 
peace among yourselves." He then closed the book and sat down. 
They remembered that charge. 

Mr. Merrill tells me that at the installation of the Rev. Joseph 
Gibbs in 183.5, his father, who was an old Scotch minister, gave the 
charge to the pastor in these words, or using these words in the 
course of his charge : '' Joseph, if after you have been here two years 
the people like you as well as they do now, it will be because you 
have not done j^our duty." He died within that time. 

Ben Wiser was a character about Haverhill, especially court week. 
One day at dinner in the tavern, a man swallowed a fish bone, and 
came near choking. Ben said that he had once invented a little con- 
trivance, which, being placed in the mouth when eating fish, would 
separate the bones from the fish, throw them out, and gently guide 
the latter down the throat. He loaned it to a man one day, who put 
it in wrong side to, and it sent the hones down the man's throat and 
choked him. The man's relatives smashed the machine, and Ben 
never could remember how to make another. 

[F. P. Wells. 



ERRATUM. 

In foot-note, page 30, for ,Iohn L. Nelson read Thomas L. Nelson. 






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